Integrating sustainability into the way business works is widely recognized as an imperative. However, what that looks like operationally, and the path to it, are still poorly understood. GOLDEN for Sustainability is addressing these gaps through two integrated activities. One is to advance knowledge about organizational learning and change for sustainability. The second is to actively support organizations’ transition towards their own model of sustainable enterprise. In effect, we aim to support the development of corporations’ dynamic capabilities for sustainability. GOLDEN is focusing on companies’ change and learning challenges as they identify, make sense and manage sustainability issues and rapidly evolving stakeholder expectations of corporate behavior.
GOLDEN’s strategy and scale of ambition make it unique. Its strategy is to work through collaboration between corporations, research institutes and others. It is integrating learning and change, with the ambition of global impact.
GOLDEN for Sustainability is a global multi-stakeholder initiative. Academic research centers bring the data-gathering and analytical skills to work with companies in a three-year cycle of activities. These activities develop the knowledge and support development of the capabilities necessary to respond to the sustainability imperative.
This work connects research and action very closely, building on traditions of “engaged scholarship” and “action research”. It holds academic “researchers” and company “practitioners” in a close partnership based on commitment to success of the shared goal of developing dynamic capabilities knowledge and capacity to address sustainability.
All this is under the supervision of a global Council that is made up of leading academic and corporate participants, and representative participants of other constituencies including business associations, sustainability rating agencies, other cross-sector networks and global NGOs. You can read more details in the GOLDEN Plan.
